Netflix Chronicles #1

Well I thought I would start posting my thoughts on different things I have seen on Netflix, they aren't new movies, but there are many great movies, and also many great tv shows on Netflix Instant, as well as on demand on the premium channels that I get, and even some movies on DVD that I might have missed watching when they first came out. I just thought I would write about them as I watch them, not everything will get written about, but anything I find interesting. Netflix may be in the title, but this is not really limited to Netflix.

Tucker and Dale Vs. Evil- I watched this movie again recently with one of my friends, and I really enjoyed it, maybe not quite as much as the first time, but I definitely laughed a ton and jumped at the times I was supposed to. I think not knowing anything about the story going into it helps, other than knowing that it is a horror comedy, so there will be some scares and a bit of blood, while there are also some lovable characters. I highly recommend this movie.

Brick- This movie really wowed me, I really don't know where to start with the awesome things that it did. This was the movie that Rian Johnson wrote and directed with Joseph Gordon-Levitt in it because they worked together again in Looper. This movie takes the classic genre of film noir and places it in a high school setting. I still got the feeling that the movie was from another time, other than the semi-modern tech like cell phones. The movie was just simply awesome, and I would advise everyone to check it out. It is available on Netflix Instant, and can likely be found through other means as well, that was just the most convenient for me. I think this move was somewhat of an independent film and did not get that large of a release back in 2005 when it came out, I definitely did not heat about it until much later.

House on Haunted Hill- This is the original with Vincent Price, I had seen at least one movie with Vincent Price in it previously, but I thought another would have been a good taste of history around Halloween. This movie, I believe was likely wonderful when it was released in 1959, there were some very scary moments. I think they chose the right times for scares and the right times for twists, I liked the story, and even some of the effects were good, I just think some of it was just too dated to hold up over the 50+ years since its release. If you want to see a classic, check it out, otherwise I think you can pass on it.

Don't Trust the B in Apt. 23- I honestly can't explain why I started watching this show on Netflix, but I did. I had always thought that Krysten Ritter was funny in a weird sort of way. I think the weirdness is what I really like about this show, you have the party girl, the quiet Midwestern girl, and James Van Der Beek playing himself, or a comedic version of himself in New York. There is a lot of strange and dirty humor in this show, but that is just my kind of thing after all. I would say it is worth watching if you want a short funny show to check out, I think there are only 26 total episodes, and I am almost half way through the series, and it has really breezed by so far.

Drive- There was a lot of hype around this movie when it came out, I guess I never took the time to go and see it in the theater, and for some reason I never really felt an urgent need to see it. I don't know if I just didn't connect with this movie, but it wasn't all that enjoyable for me. I honestly think one of my favorite parts was the opening driving scene, and how that opening chase ended, such a brilliant idea! Other than that part, I felt like the movie was a lot of flash with only minimal bang. I didn't find the story very compelling, and while there were a lot of people I like in the movie, I didn't think the performances were that great. I could be a downer, but I just thought this movie was a miss for me.

Well this concludes the first edition of my ramblings about random visual media consumption that I have to share.

Peter's Cooking Diary #10

Its time for a slightly delayed edition of my cooking diary, and this week I had some fun, I actually made 2 dishes in my slow cooker this week, but without much further ado I will start with some of the pictures!

 This is some of the onions garlic and mushrooms from last week as well as some bacon getting warmed up.

 Next I added some eggs and cooked up a nice scramble for breakfast, I had this for breakfast most days last week. It was a delicious and very flavorful way to start the day!

This is another example of things I mixed in with my eggs, chopped up and smoked salmon with bacon as well. Another delicious breakfast scramble.

How do I start just about every cooking day, bacon!!!!

The delicious bacon after it has finished giving up all of its delicious fat.

I also start a lot of my cooking with onion and garlic cooking in bacon fat, I love the smell of these all cooking together.

This is tomatoes, onions, garlic, carrots, and spices in my slow cooker on top of the pork loin that I was cooking this week.

This is what it looked like once I covered the pork with the sauce.

This is another reason why I love Aldi, they have great German food available for cheap prices. I love hand made Spaetzle a little bit more as they have a unique texture to them that I am not sure you can get from a dried product.

The cauliflower that would go into my 2nd dish, it was a total of 2 heads chopped up.

This is the creamy cheesy cauliflower when it went into the slow cooker. The foil was in the crock pot to prevent the cheese from burning. One of the ingredients in the liquid sauce is condensed cheddar cheese soup, which is a great base for cheese sauces.

This is the steamy and cooked cauliflower that I ended up with. I really like the recipe, I may try to add a little flavor to the recipe next time, but the recipe did call for it to be topped with the rendered bacon. I liked it with a lot of black pepper for that little bite to it.

This might be a little hard to tell, but this is what I ate for lunch this week, and actually some for dinner too. Pork loin steak served on top of spaetzle smothered in the sauce it was cooked in, along with some creamy cheesy, cauliflower.

So this weekend I also had a friend over for our own little dinner party, I don't do much entertaining, but we both wanted to have a kind of spread like this. There is some cranberry cheddar cheese, kalamata olives, smoked salmon, garlic and herb cheese curds, pickles I got from my aunt in Missouri, pumpkin spice cream cheese, almonds, amish hand rolled butter, wheat crackers and a baguette. It was great and a lot of fun!

Peter's Cooking Diary #9

Wow so it has been a little while since I have written about my cooking, but this time around I do have a ton of pictures to share.

We will start with something that I did a few weeks ago, it wasn't as much cooking as it was using up my leftover chili.

 First I am just reheating my leftover chicken chili on the stove.

 Next I added some cubed up Velveeta, which is really difficult to work with, its like putty, and sticks to a knife like nothing else!

 This is the final product, cheesy, creamy, chili cheese dip, I dipped all sorts of things in it, mostly veggies, I baked some frozen waffle fries, and I also just had to dip my finger in. It was delicious and is definitely something I would make for a party with others.

Then we get to what I did today, it was a big day with lots of cooking, I decided I would do all of the chopping and prep work before I started cooking, so the first steps would be to separate all of the things for the different items I was making.

 First I have the mushrooms, onion, and garlic that I was cooking in bacon grease that I would reheat with bacon and mix in with my eggs for breakfast every morning. I also found another use for it lower in the post.

 Next we have the onion, garlic, and red bell pepper which were going to be cooked with some seasonings as the flavor base for my meatloaf.

 Finally I set aside some garlic to go with my roasted broccoli, which would be the side dish to my meat loaf for my lunch during the week.

 Another technique learned from the cook book, creating a sling in the crock pot with foil, to help remove the meatloaf when it is done cooking. There is also what is referred to as a collar underneath that help to even out the heat inside so the meatloaf doesn't burn on the side next to the heating element.

Most of my days cooking start with the cooking of bacon, this is done to provide me with some fresh bacon grease for the other cooking I will be doing. It also just makes my apartment smell amazing and bacony, and the bacon will be used for my breakfast with eggs during the week.

 Its quite steamy in the picture, its the mushrooms, onion, and garlic cooking through in bacon fat, it also helped to clean up the little bits left in the pan by the bacon, I added a little red pepper flake for just a little bit of heat. These got so nicely cooked down, and smelled delicious.

 This is the end result of the mushrooms, onion, and garlic, they really did smell amazing, and were delicious, I added just a splash of soy sauce to the pan for that added depth of flavor.

 From my favorite cook book, this is a technique used as a binder and thickener in things, bread mashed in milk, white bread seems to be the only bread that works for this though, I have actually been buying the soft burger buns from the bakery at the local grocery store, they are quite delicious, and mash up quite well.

 I made some delicious blueberry corn cakes.....I am only kidding about that this is actually the bread and milk mixture, along with a can of black beans that I rinsed, and mashed all together. It was what the recipe told me to do, I guess it just added to the binding ability of the ingredients.

 This is one of my favorite ingredients, I put them in my chili every time, they add some fruity and smoky pepper flavor to everything, so even though they weren't in the recipe, I wanted to add them to the meatloaf I was making.

 This is the cooked down bowl of onion, garlic, and red bell pepper, along with the first roasted chiles, dark chile powder, oregano, and a drained can of corn.

 Added the bean, bread and milk mixture, to the veggies from above. I added the 2 eggs and meat and started mixing to combine it all together.

 The only way to mix meatloaf is my hand, this is my meatloaf hand!

 The meatloaf nestled into the slow cooker.

 Topped the meat loaf with bbq sauce per the recipe, I love bbq sauce on everything, so you can see why i chose this recipe.

 This is the meatloaf when it was finished in the slow cooker, the sauce was nice and caramelized.

I used the sling for its intended purpose, to easily remove the meatloaf and put it on a baking sheet to cool off and set up.

So much broccoli!

 I actually had to do a total of 3 sheets worth of broccoli for roasting, I would normally do something with cauliflower, but it was expensive this week and the heads were very small, so I just did a bunch of broccoli. I drizzled some oil on them, some salt, and some garlic before baking them off.

 This is what the finished product looks like, a little browned and softened, not too soft, but not too hard.

 I put the broccoli in a container and sprinkled with some grated Parmesan cheese over them.

 The final thing I cooked today was pizza. The grocery store I usually shop at, Festival foods, had their sale on different pizza fixins, so I decided that I would make some, and I really loved the results. This is their whole grain pizza dough that I believe they mix in house, I spread it on a greased baking sheet. I have done this before, and I had stretched it to the corners, but the corners were a bit too toasty for my liking, I left it like this and it turned out very well.

I spooned sauce over the dough and left it intentionally uneven on the crust, I think it makes bites of pizza a little big different, you just have to beware of the exploding pizza sauce.

I sprinkled all of the remaining Parmesan on top of the sauce, it added a nice salty base for the pizza.

 I sprinkled a variety of other cheeses on top, I like my pizza quite cheesy.

 The last things that I added were some deli smoked ham, and some of the onion, mushroom, garlic mixture I cooked in bacon fat before. I sprinkled a little red pepper flake and oregano over the top for a finishing touch to the pizza.

The last picture I have for the post is the finished pizza that was amazing, some of the best pizza I have had. I loved the nuttiness of the whole wheat crust, I love the smokiness of the ham, and the sweetness from the onions and mushrooms. The oregano added a wonderful smell to the pizza too, the red pepper added just the right level of heat, and the pizza cost about 5 bucks to make.

I had a great day of cooking, which is something I really love doing. I need to write on here more often about cooking and other food related items, they are things that I truly do have a passion for.

Food Adventures: S.A.L.T. in De Pere, Wisconsin

I have been wanting to start writing about dining experiences in the area, and when I travel, but I haven't because there really aren't all that many interesting and creative restaurants in the area. I didn't take pictures like I really should have, but I will get better at this the more I do it.

I had come across this restaurant while viewing someone's dating profile of all things, and looked up the website. I never messaged the girl, but I really enjoyed the restaurant.

S.A.L.T. is a restaurant in downtown De Pere, Wisconsin, an area that I am discovering more and more has some great great food options in it. This restaurant has a nice laid back atmosphere, and serves a menu of what it calls modern comfort food, taking classic comfort foods and moving it into the modern world.

I went with me fellow foodie friend Shealaina, I don't really like the term foodie, but there isn't another term that people use for being a fan of trying new foods, and creative takes on foods. 

The menu offers small, medium, and large plates, while there is also a menu of different pickles, meats, spreads, and cheeses that was offered as well. My friend and I decided to get a few of the small plates to share, and then each got a medium tray for an entree.

We both loved the things we saw on the menu, and we plan to go back and try some other things.

I especially enjoyed the Breaking Bad reference in "Los Pollos Hermanos" on the menu. The menu as a whole was so much more creative than the things that you see in restaurants around here, the Green Bay area, is not known for its culinary creativity, I think Shealaina and I will be doing a better job of searching for new places and new things to try in the area in the future though.

For the small plates we ordered the sampler, and the shrimp and grits. The sampler came with house made pickles, curry hummus, goat cheese, cherry compote, mustard, brewers sausage, toasted bread slices, and some pita slices. I loved the shrimp and grits, the grits were nice and creamy, the shrimp was cooked in a great rich tomato sauce, all in all a great starter. The sampler was amazing, I think the curry added to the hummus was my favorite part of it, but we devoured everything on the sampler plate. I think next time we will try more of the little parts from the ala carte menu on the bar menu, to get to try new things, like the pickled brussel sprouts, or the artisan meat tray.

For our medium plates Shealaina got a great butternut squash risotto, she loved it, I enjoyed the tastes I got of it, and I am not the biggest fan of squash. I got the schnitzel, which was everything I wanted it to be plus more. The schnitzel was served on a bed of spaetzle, which are small hand made German dumplings, on the side was a pureed red cabbage, which reminded me of the cabbage my dad used to make, on the side there were also some fried brussel sprouts, and finally on top of the schnitzel was a wonderfully gooey poached egg! I know that sounds like a lot, but all of the elements of it works so well together, the textures and flavors were all amazing! The schnitzel was very tender and crispy, the spaezle was great, I enjoyed the cabbage puree, and the fried brussel sprouts were great, I have never been that much of a fan of them, but fried crispy they were great.

Finally we decided we had loved all of the food that we wanted to share some dessert too. Their dessert menu had some great options on it, but we decided to go with the sticky toffee pudding, which was a great moist little cake that was topped with a nice sticky toffee sauce and then also with a great cream sauce, it was wonderful and definitely worth it after the whole meal.

As I said before, Shealaina and I both loved the food we got, and look forward to returning to this restaurant. Well this was the first post in what I hope is a series of posts about the food adventures I have.

My Kind of Horror Movie

I can't claim that I am the biggest horror movie fan, but there are definitely certain horror movies that I enjoy, I just thought I would give a little bit of a rundown of those movies, it is October after all. Growing up I wasn't that much of a fan of horror, I was very easily scared, and had lots of nightmares. I am not older, but I still get scared, but I do enjoy it to a certain extent at this point. I just wanted to write about some of my favorite horror movies, and even found quite a few that I love on Netflix.

Alien- I love the first 2 movies of the series, great suspense and horror in them. Also one of few horror movies with a female hero, definitely 2 of my favorite Sigourney Weaver movies.

Attack The Block- A great and original monster/alien movie made in England and produced by one of my favorite directors, Edgar Wright. If you watch it, you will want to start calling your friends Bruv.

Gremlins- Who didn't watch and love this movie as a kid? Its still very enjoyable.

Leprechaun- My favorite bad horror series, how can you go wrong with Warwick Davis as the star? A young Jennifer Aniston is in the first movie, the 2nd movie is on Netflix Instant. Later in the series the movies get more ridiculous, going into space and into the hood.

Pan's Labrynth- This is a great Guillermo Del Toro movie, with some of his most creepy and erie monsters, with the back drop of being in Franco Era Spain.

Shaun of the Dead- The movie that really helped launch the carreers of Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, and Edgar Wright. A great horror comedy.

The Shining- Such an all around classic! How many times has this been parodied, but it is still great with some amazing visuals, and many very creepy parts to it.

Signs- I think this is an underrated movie, I think it does a good job of hiding the aliens while still have some suspenseful, and I like how the story actually came together, I guess I don't hate M. Night as much as many other people do.

Zombieland- I think this is my 2nd favorite zombedy, love the comedy, and characters, and who doesnt enjoy Emma Stone?

The Night of the Living Dead- The original zombie movie, always shown on tv a lot around Halloween, and I watch it on a yearly basis.

Dawn of the Dead- I have to admit that I have only seen the remake, but I love watching it, I think it pays a good tribute to the original Romero style zombies.

On Netflix
The Host- I love this movie, its a Korean monster movie about creature that start attacking people and it can be found on Netflix.

The Cabin in the Woods- This is a great meta horror movies that just deconstructs the genre, truly scary while also being extremely funny, produced and written by Joss Whedon. It is on Netflix.

Carrie-The original is found on Netflix, I really enjoyed it when I watched it years ago, I am usually of the mindset that you should watch the original version of something before you watch the remake, especially when the remake doesn't really change anything. A classic story about teenage angst gone horribly wrong.

Tucker and Dale Vs Evil- I think its a different take on a horror movie where everything happens because of a misunderstanding. On Netflix. I love both Tyler Labine and Alan Tudyk in almost everything they are in.

Evil Dead 2- Available on Netflix, you don't need to see the first Evil Dead to enjoy the 2nd one. The 2nd is pretty much a remake of the first by the same group of people once they were ale to get funding for it. This helped launch the careers of Bruce Campbell and Sam Raimi, a good funny horror movie. Also the sequel Army of Darkness is deifnitely worth checking out.

Slither- I love this dark and disturbing horror movie, it can be quite gross at times, I will give that warning, but its got some great people in it like Nathan Fillion and Elizabeth Banks. On Netflix

The Faculty- This is one of my guilty pleasure movies, I would watch this movie all of the time when it was on TNT or TBS or USA or one of those channels quite frequently. It is a bit of a take on The Invasion of the Body Snatchers. On Netflix

Ghostbusters- Who doesn't love this movie? If you don't I am not sure why you are reading my blog, we probably don't have much in common then. On Netflix


I haven't seen but have in me queue on Netflix

House on Haunted Hill- the Original with Vincent Price, I have seen some movies with Vincent Price and thought I would check this one out.

The Innkeepers- I heard about this movie from a podcast I listen to, and it was filmed in an old inn that is supposedly haunted out east. Seemed like an original story.

Mimic- I might be wrong, but this was Guillermo Del Toro's first english language movie. It is about an ever evolving creature that was created through the use of pesticides.

Let The Right One In- A Swedish Vampire movie that was remade in the US a few years ago.

Gravity

I saw gravity about a week ago, and definitely took a little bit of time to reflect on the movie, and I think this might be the best movie to go see alone, that I have seen in a long time. I think the nature of the film, the silence of it, and just taking the whole movie in was a great singular experience.

This is the first movie where I actually thought the 3D was worth it to have, I didn't really care for Avatar all that much. I wish I could have seen this movie in IMAX 3D, it really felt like an IMAX movie that just happened to have a narrative to it. I can only imagine how amazing it would have been on the more expansive screen.

I don't really know what type of genre to put this movie into, it isn't really conventional science fiction, I guess science fiction just makes me think of aliens, or at least a far off future. This story could have happened in the last 10-20 years or in the near future, I actually enjoyed that there wasn't a year stamped on it. What makes this movie so wonderful is the fact that it is a very possible scenario. It is

I will be vague in case people are still planning to see it, but this movie does so many things that I just hadn't really seen or heard in my life. The movie does things with visual and audio effects that, for me at least, set it apart. This movie should at the very least win some Oscars for audio and visual effects, but I think it would be very deserving of pretty much all major categories. Sandra Bullock should be nominated for leading actress, Alfonso Cuaron should be nominated for best original screenplay and best director, George Clooney could definitely get a nomination for best supporting actor. Maybe this is me overstating everything, its only the beginning of Oscar season, and after nothing all that amazing came out during the Summer movie season, at least in the performance area. Maybe this is just the first of many great movies to come out this year.

I really have no idea how they were able to do some of the things they did effects-wise in this movie, but they are just so very cool. I am someone who will always support original storytelling and that is definitely what Gravity is. Its a thriller, and possibly even realistic horror, with some comedic elements, and some good characters. The movie is not exactly what I expected it to be from the trailers, but I am ok with that because i just thought it was brilliant.

I will be honest and say the only movie directed by Alfonso Cuaron that I had seen was the Harry Potter movie that he directed, I wanted to see Children of Men which got good ratings but I never got around to it. I will say going forward that this might push him into the must see director category. He clearly had a vision for what he wanted to do with this movie, and I think he was able to do the things that he wanted to. I will definitely look for a making of documentary on the Blu-Ray because it will be a making of documentary worth watching.

Below you will see that we have a new front runner for movie of the year:

8. Pain & Gain
7. World War Z
6. Pacific Rim
5. Iron Man 3
4. Star Trek Into Darkness
3. This Is the End
2. The World's End
1.Gravity

The World's End

I have spent a few weeks thinking about where I would rank this movie both in this year, and also among its related films. I really enjoy the movie as a whole, and I think it might be the best shot of the 3 films in the Cornetto trilogy.

I know I have been quite outspoken in my criticism of how action is shot in movies. I tend to think that my eyes are a bit sensitive to bright flashes of light. Michael Bay for example shoot his action scenes in ways that my eyes are just not able to adjust to and for the most part it just looks like a blur. This movie is much different. The action was crystal clear, it did not quickly transition from light to darkness, and my eyes were able to deal with everything that happened actionwise in the film, which doesn't seem like it should be a big deal, but it really is for me. I also think that this movie has some of the funniest action scenes I have seen in my life.

While this movie is a comedy, it definitely has a lot of heart to it, even more than I thought it would have heading into the theater. There are some great themes of living in the past, nostalgia, with also showing the negative parts of dwelling too much on the past. I would say it has more heart to it than the previous 2 films as well.

I would advise everyone to see this movie, it is my current favorite movie that I have seen this year, with a few more highly anticipated movies coming.

7. Pain & Gain
6. World War Z
5. Pacific Rim
4. Iron Man 3
3. Star Trek Into Darkness
2. This Is the End
1. The World's End

What made this movie so difficult to write about is that I think that it might be my least favorite of the 3 previously made Edger Wright directed movies. I would rank them:

4. The World's End
3. Hot Fuzz
2. Scott Pilgrim vs the World
1. Shaun of the Dead

I have absolutely loved all of these movies, but I just think The World's End did not quite live up to the previous films. I will say that I am really looking forward to Ant-Man, a film in the Marvel universe that is being written and Directed by Edgar Wright, I am also looking forward to seeing who will be slated to play the lead role of that, hopefully someone like Nathan Fillion.